Chapter 14

Lord of the Manor

'My own life is rather dull these days. I sort of won the Maharajah of
Jaipur's luxury Sussex estate in a poker game . . .' (Note in the
Explorers Log from Dr L. Ron Hubbard, Explorers Journal, February 1960)

* * * * *

Saint Hill Manor was a Georgian mansion on a landscaped estate two miles
from the little market town of East Grinstead in Sussex. The countryside
thereabouts was much favoured by the landed gentry in the eighteenth century
for the beauty of its verdant, gently rolling hills and its proximity to the
court in London, only a few hours away by horse and carriage, and Saint Hill
was one of a number of large country houses in the area.

Built for a wealthy landowner in 1733, the manor could not be described as
one of the glories of Georgian architecture (indeed, its sandstone
façade had a faintly brooding aspect), but it was sufficiently imposing
to merit a ballroom with marble columns and grounds of fifty acres with a
lake, surrounded by a dense boundary hedge of rhododendrons. By the time it
passed into the ownership of the Maharajah of Jaipur, the house boasted eleven
bedrooms, eight bathrooms and an outdoor swimming-pool. While the Maharajah
spent a considerable sum on interior improvements, including commissioning the
artist John Spencer Churchill to paint a mural in one of the first-floor
rooms, he only lived in the house intermittently. When the fortunes of the
Indian princes wavered after Independence in 1947, he decided to put his
English estate on the market and was happy to find a buyer in the unlikely
shape of L. Ron Hubbard.

The arrival of an American family at Saint Hill Manor in the spring of 1959
occasioned almost as much excitement in East Grinstead as that of the exotic
Maharajah had done some years earlier. Alan Larcombe, a young reporter on the
East Grinstead Courier was despatched to interview the new owner and
found him to be extremely co-operative, happy to pose for a photograph with
his wife and children and more than willing to talk about himself.

Dr Hubbard, the 'nuclear scientist', on the steps of Saint Hill, the
Georgian manor house he bought out of the proceeds of Dianetics. (Photo
Source Limited)

'An American and his delightful family find a haven at Saint Hill', the
Courier reported in its issue of 29 May 1959. Describing 'Dr Hubbard'
as a 'tall, heavily built man whose work for humanity is known throughout the
world', Larcombe made no attempt to explain the nature of Dr Hubbard's work,
but contented himself with a recap of his subject's career, starting,
naturally, with breaking broncos and hunting coyotes on his grandfather's
cattle ranch. 'When he inherited his grandfather's cattle estates in Montana
and all its debts, he wrote it into solvency, turning his hand to anything:
essays, fiction and film scripts.'

The inheriting of his grandfather's insolvent cattle estates was a titbit
of information Hubbard had not previously disclosed, as was his revelation
that he was deeply involved in the study of plant life. 'The production of
plant mutations is one of his most important projects at the moment. By
battering seeds with X-rays, Dr Hubbard can either reduce a plant through its
stages of evolution or advance it.'

It was, perhaps, inevitable that Hubbard would become an expert gardener
the instant he moved into the English countryside and the fact that Saint Hill
Manor had well-stocked greenhouses undoubtedly helped fire his interest. But
his horticultural experiments also helped divert attention from the real
reason he had bought the estate: his intention was that it should become the
world-wide headquarters of Scientology. Hubbard surmised, no doubt correctly,
that the people of East Grinstead were not quite ready for this piece of
information.

In August, the Courier reported that the experiments being conducted
at Saint Hill by the 'nuclear scientist, Dr Hubbard' promised to revolutionize
gardening. By treating seeds with 'radioactive rays' he was growing tomato
plants 16 feet high, with an average of 15 trusses and 45 tomatoes on each
truss. He had also discovered that an 'infra-red ray lamp' provided complete
protection against mildew, a discovery that was likely to save market
gardeners 'thousands of pounds'.

The reporter, again, was Alan Larcombe: 'He showed us some very big
tomatoes and I remember thinking at the time that anyone could have grown them
that size with fertilizers, but he was very keen we should take a photograph
of them, so we did.'[1] The picture the newspaper
used was of little Quentin, five years old, standing on duckboards in his
father's greenhouse, staring solemnly at the camera through a forest of tomato
and maize plants.

Dr Hubbard's experiments soon came to the attention of Garden News,
to which publication he revealed, gardener to gardener, his conviction that
plants felt pain. He demonstrated by connecting an E-meter to a geranium with
crocodile clips, tearing off its leaves and showing how the needle of the
E-meter oscillated as he did so. The

_______________1. Interview with Alan Larcombe, East Grinstead, November 1985

It was not long before television and Fleet Street reporters were beating a
path to Saint Hill Manor demanding to interview Hubbard about his novel
theories. Always pleased to help the gentlemen of the press, he was memorably
photographed looking compassionately at a tomato jabbed by probes attached to
an E-meter - a picture that eventually found its way into Newsweek
magazine, causing a good deal of harmless merriment at his expense. Alan
Whicker, a well-known British television interviewer, did his best to make
Hubbard look like a crank, but Hubbard contrived to come across as a rather
likeable and confident personality. When Whicker moved in for the kill,
sarcastically inquiring if rose pruning should be stopped lest it caused pain
and anxiety, Hubbard neatly side-stopped the question and drew a parallel with
an essential life-preserving medical operation on a human being. He might have
whacky ideas, Whicker discovered, but he was certainly no fool.

Scientologists around the world could have been forgiven for wondering what
their beloved leader was up to, but an explanation was soon forthcoming. The
purpose of Ron's experiments, they were told, was to 'reform the world's food
supply'. He had already produced 'ever-bearing tomato plants and sweetcorn
plants sufficiently impressive to startle British newspapers into front-page
stories about this new wizardry'.[3]

Soon after Hubbard moved into Saint Hill, the Church of Scientology
commissioned a bust of its founder from the sculptor Edward Harris. Harris
liked his sitters to talk while he was working and asked his friend, Joan
Vidal, to attend the sittings and chat with Hubbard. 'My first impression of
him', she said, 'was that with his very pink skin and light red hair he looked
like a fat, pink, scrubbed pig. I remember one of the first things he told me
was that you could hear a tomato scream if you cut it and that's why he never
ate tomatoes. He talked a lot about whether vegetables could feel pain and
about all his past lives. It was very entertaining; it was obvious he had a
good mind and was widely read.

'After the bust was finished we were invited to dinner with him and his
wife at Saint Hill. When we arrived we were met by Mary Sue. She was a rather
drab, mousy, nothing sort of person quite a bit younger than him. She showed
us into a book-lined study and he waited a few minutes, rather theatrically,
before making an entrance. I don't think they had finished work on the house
because we had dinner in the kitchen. It was all white tiled, very antiseptic,
and the meal was served by a woman wearing a white overall, white shoes and
stockings. There

was nothing to drink but Coca-Cola or water and the food was awful - we had
frozen plaice fillets, a few vegetables and ice-cream, but he had an enormous
steak overhanging his plate. It was obvious that everything revolved around
him. He was almost like Oswald Mosley, he had the same sort of power. Both of
them talked a lot about past lives; they told me that their daughter had
previously been a telephone operator who had died in a fire. We didn't stay
late and when we got back to Victoria Station Eddie and I were both so hungry
that we went in the buffet and had delicious roast lamb
sandwiches.'[4]

In October, Dr Hubbard unveiled yet another of his interests. Learning
that East Grinstead had been unable to fill a vacancy for a Road Safety
Organizer, he volunteered for the job. As he explained to a meeting of the
East Grinstead Road Safety Committee, he was anxious to make a contribution to
the community and he felt that the experience he had gained serving on
'numerous' road safety committees in the United States could be put to good
use in East Grinstead. He gave an interesting talk on road safety campaigns in
the United States, put forward many ideas on how to reduce accidents locally,
confidently answered questions and was unanimously elected as the town's new
Road Safety Organizer by a grateful committee.

He was not able to give road safety considerations his attention for too
long, however, for he had arranged to visit Australia in November to lecture
the Scientologists in Melbourne. He left London on 31 October, flying
first-class on BOAC via Calcutta and Singapore. At the Hubbard Communications
Office in Spring Street, Melbourne, he was greeted by an ecstatic crowd of
Scientologists who cheered noisily when he announced his belief that Australia
would be the first 'clear continent'. Between lectures, he spent hours with
local HASI executives discussing ways of persuading the Australian Labour
Party and trades union movement to adopt Scientology techniques. Hubbard was
convinced that Scientology could help Labour win the next election in
Australia, thus creating a favourable climate for the development of the
church and neutralizing the unabated hostility of the Australian media.

While he was still in Melbourne, Hubbard received an urgent telephone call
from Washington with bad news. Nibs, he was told, had 'blown'. To
Scientologists, 'blowing the org' (leaving the church) was one of the worst
crimes in the book: it was almost unbelievable that the highly-placed son and
namesake of the founder would take such a step. Nibs had simultaneously held
five posts in Scientology's increasingly cumbersome bureaucratic structure: he
was Organizational Secretary of the Founding Church of Scientology, Washington
DC; Hubbard Communications Officer-in-Charge, Washington DC; Chief Advanced
Clinical Course Instructor; Hubbard Communications Office World Wide Technical
Director; and a Member of the International Council.

Despite his portentous titles, Nibs was frustrated by not being able to
make any money out of Scientology and he left a letter to his father
explaining that this was the only reason for his resignation: 'Over the past
few years, I have found it increasingly difficult to maintain basic financial
survival for myself and my family. This I must remedy. I fully realize that I
have not handled my financial affairs in the most optimum manner. But for six
years I have managed to provide, at least the basic necessities, in some
manner. In doing so I have depleted all my reserves and have become deeply in
debt . . .'

Hubbard, who was not exactly a pillar of rectitude in fiscal matters, was
nevertheless furious with his son. Nibs had been in and out of debt ever since
he had first turned up on Hubbard's doorstep in Phoenix. The problem was that
he had his father's casual attitude towards money, but none of his talent for
making it and none of his luck. In his resignation letter, Nibs said he was
going to look for a full-time job, but hoped to be able to continue practising
Scientology in his spare time. He failed to take into account the fact that
his father would automatically view his defection as an act of
treachery. Hubbard would never have allowed Nibs to continue trying to make
money out of Scientology. He quickly scribbled an airmail letter to Marilyn
Routsong on 25 November: 'Nibs was trying to get more money by loans from
us. This may make a field upset but we'll survive. If he goes into practice
anywhere or starts up a squirrel activity have HCO cancel all certificates and
awards of his. He won't ever be hired back.'

A few days later Hubbard received more, equally unwelcome, family news when
his Aunt Toilie telephoned from Bremerton to say that his
seventy-four-year-old mother had had a stroke, was very ill and not expected
to live. Hubbard had had little contact with his parents, or the Waterbury
family, since the end of the war. Toilie was the only one who tried to keep in
touch, writing to him once or twice a year, and it fell to her to find Ron
when May was taken to hospital. Hubbard told her, over a crackling
inter-continental telephone line that he could not get away, he was too busy.

Toilie was quite as forceful a personality as a grey-haired old lady as she
had been as a young woman. 'You're coming home,' she told him. 'I want you to
catch the next flight out. That is orders, Ron. You owe that much to your
mother and I pray to God you get here before she's dead.'

By the time Hubbard arrived in Bremerton, his mother was in a coma. He went
in to see her, held her hand and talked to her; he told the family afterwards
he was sure she knew he was there. She died the following day. 'Ron didn't
stay for the funeral,' said his Aunt Marnie. 'He organized the burial, ordered
the stone, paid all the expenses and

made arrangements for a man from the Church of Scientology to come up and
accompany the body with Hub and Toilie to the funeral in Helena. Then he flew
back to England from Bremerton. I thought he should have stayed for the
funeral. I don't know what could have been so pressing that he had to get back
to England.'[5]

In March 1960, the gentle burghers of East Grinstead learned a little more
about their Road Safety Organizer when he published a book titled Have You
Lived Before This Life? in which were described a number of startling
'past lives' revealed during auditing. One case history concerned a previous
existence as a walrus, another as a fish, a third had witnessed the
destruction of Pompeii in AD 79 and a fourth had been a 'very happy being who
strayed to the planet Nostra 23,064,000,000 years ago'.

The Courier reported that the book caused a 'storm of controversy'
in the town, as might have been anticipated, and Hubbard was prompted to issue
a statement seeking to explain something of Scientology: 'Scientific research
work on Dianetics and Scientology has been carried out by Dr L. Ron Hubbard,
and skilled persons employed by him, over the past 30 years. Only since 1950
has the knowledge gleaned from this exacting and penetrating work into the
functions of the mind been released to the general public in the form of
special and skilled treatment . . . In connection with Dr Hubbard's
book Have You Lived Before This Life? the contents are merely reported
from an observer's point of view . . .'

In an internal memo to his press officer, Hubbard stressed the need to
emphasize constantly that he was working in the field of 'nuclear physics on
life sources and life energy' in order to avoid being tagged as a psychiatrist
or spiritualist. 'This will take some doing, perhaps,' he added, in a rare
moment of candour.[6]

Hubbard need not have worried overmuch as far as East Grinstead was
concerned, since the weather and the Royal Family were topics of much greater
perennial interest than whatever was going on at Saint Hill Manor. The cast
list of the upcoming, absorbing and long-running British royal soap opera was
just being drawn up in spring 1960 - the Queen's third child, Prince Andrew,
was born in February and Princess Margaret was due to marry in May. To add a
little spice to the conversation in East Grinstead pubs, there was also the
forthcoming obscenity trial of D. H. Lawrence's masterpiece, Lady
Chatterley's Lover.

This last event was being followed closely by Mary Sue as her husband had
recently uncovered a previous life coincidentally revealing her to have been
none other than D. H. Lawrence! In a letter to her friend, Marilyn Routsong,
Mary Sue explained the considerable

problems she had experienced as D. H. Lawrence. It seemed the great writer
had difficulty constructing plots, thought poetry was a joke and believed
little of what he wrote.

On the strength of this previous incarnation, Mary Sue confessed that she,
too, was going to write a book and outlined the plot with a somewhat
unpromising grasp of grammar and spelling. She wrote that it would be
completely anti-Christ. The first sentence begins 'In the small town of Balei,
a bastard child was born.' She then intended to show how he was really a
mongrel and the son of three fathers (a joke on the Trinity of God) because
the mother had, the night in question, slept with three of the town's most
virile men and not knowing whose sperm had reached her womb, had thereupon
decided to call him Ali, Son of ----, Son of ----, and Son of ---- which
impressed the local inhabitants and created a stir throughout the country. She
concluded that she wouldn't have it in her name, for obvious reasons.

In the same letter, Mary Sue mentioned the rumpus that had been caused when
Ron ordered all the staff at Saint Hill to be checked out on an E-meter. She
noted that three office staff refused and five domestic staff refused. She was
surprised and wrote that they were all scared to death of the E-meter and
pretending that it was something that would only happen in America, adding
that they evidently have something to hide because of their fear to go on the
E-meter.[7]

Hubbard's insistence that everyone who worked for him be interrogated on
the E-meter was part of the routine 'security checking' he deemed necessary to
identify potential trouble-makers, dissidents and spies. No one in Scientology
now doubted the capability of the E-meter to expose visceral emotions and ever
more elaborate 'sec-checks' would become a common feature of life in the
Scientology movement - evidence of Hubbard's persistent paranoia about his
enemies, both those that existed in reality and those that thronged his
imagination.

Despite the not unreasonable reluctance of some of the servants at Saint
Hill Manor to be interviewed about their private lives while grasping tin cans
attached to a mysterious electric machine, the Hubbards had settled in
comfortably by the spring of 1960. The painters and decorators had finished
their work and the family was enjoying the Elysian delights of gracious living
in an English country house. On their 'personal staff' there were a secretary,
housekeeper, cook, butler, valet, nanny and tutor for the children.

The former billiards room, leading directly from the grand entrance hall,
had been re-modelled into Hubbard's private office, with a bench seat
upholstered in red leather down one side of the room and a personal
teleprinter installed alongside his desk. Also accessible from the hall was
the family dining-room, which included a bar stocked

with Coca-Cola (Hubbard's preferred drink), a large lounge and a television
room. Upstairs, Hubbard had his own suite comprising a sitting-room, bedroom
and bathroom, adjoining Mary Sue's office, bedroom and bathroom. The children
had bedrooms at the other end of the house and the 'Monkey Room', named after
the murals painted by John Spencer Churchill, was converted into a school-room
and equipped with trampoline. Apart from the kitchen, most of the remaining
rooms in the manor were used as offices.

It was the first time that the Hubbards as a family had remained in one
place for any length of time and the children were particularly enchanted by
Saint Hill Manor, with its maze of rooms and sweeping grounds. At weekends the
four of them could usually be found, muddy-kneed, exploring the estate or
paddling in rubber boots on the fringes of the lake; twice a week Diana and
Suzette attended dancing lessons at the local Bush Davies school.

Hubbard, too, liked to stroll the grounds at weekends, taking photographs
with one or the other of his new cameras. Photography was a recently acquired
hobby and his framed pictures could be found in many of the rooms at Saint
Hill. Mainly landscapes and portraits, they were of course universally
praised, even those that were slightly out of focus.

All in all, visitors to Saint Hill at this time would have observed little
amiss with the nice American family who had taken up residence. Certainly no
one would have guessed that Hubbard possessed the dubious distinction of being
probably the only owner of an English country house under the continuous
surveillance of the FBI. His file, Number 244-210-B, was much thumbed and even
included an interview with his first wife, Polly, by then re-married, who was
able to say very little except that her first husband was a 'genius with a
misdirected mind'.

To some extent, the FBI's interest in Hubbard was a situation of his own
making, for the frequently intemperate bulletins and policy letters which
flowed from Saint Hill in an endless stream for distribution to Scientologists
around the world were bound to generate the attention of J. Edgar Hoover's
staff. On 24 April 1960, for example, Hubbard issued a bulletin to US
franchise holders asking them to do everything in their power to deny the
presidency to 'a person named Richard M. Nixon'.

He claimed that after an innocent reference to Nixon in a Scientology
magazine, two armed secret service agents, acting on Nixon's orders, had
threatened staff on duty at the founding church in Washington: 'Hulking over
desks, shouting violently, they stated that they daily had to make such calls
on "lots of people" to prevent Nixon's name from being used in ways Nixon
disliked . . . They said Nixon

believed in nothing the Founding Church of Scientology stood for
. . .

'We want clean hands in public office in the United States. Let's begin by
doggedly denying Nixon the presidency no matter what his Secret Service tries
to do to us now . . . He hates us and has used what police force was
available to him to say so. So please get busy on it . . .'

Nixon was indeed denied the presidency, although it was possible that the
famous televised debates with John F. Kennedy had more to do with it than the
HCO Bulletin. But it was becoming evident that the owner of Saint Hill Manor
considered he had an important role to play in political and international
affairs and it was a responsibility he had no intention of shirking.

An HCO Bulletin in June promulgated the 'Special Zone Plan - The
Scientologists Role in Life', in which Hubbard explained how Scientologists
could exert influence in politics. 'Don't bother to get elected,' he wrote.
'Get a job on the secretarial staff or the bodyguard.' In this way positioned
close to the seat of power, he argued, Scientology would be advantageously
situated to transform an organization. 'If we were revolutionaries,' he added,
'this HCO Bulletin would be a very dangerous document.'

In August, the 'Special Zone Plan' was absorbed into a new 'Department of
Government Affairs' made necessary, Hubbard gravely explained, because of the
amount of time senior Scientology executives were having to devote to
governmental affairs, as governments around the world disintegrated under the
threat of atomic war and Communism. 'The goal of the Department', he wrote 'is
to bring government and hostile philosophies or societies into a state of
complete compliance with the goals of Scientology. This is done by high-level
ability to control and in its absence by a low-level ability to
overwhelm. Introvert such agencies. Control such agencies.'

Returning to a familiar theme, Hubbard urged his followers to defend
Scientology by attacking its opponents: 'If attacked on some vulnerable point
by anyone or anything or any organization, always find or manufacture enough
threat against them to cause them to sue for peace . . . Don't ever
defend, always attack. Don't ever do nothing. Unexpected attacks in the rear
of the enemy's front ranks work best .'

The Department of Government Affairs never existed other than as a 'policy
letter',[8] but then much of Hubbard's private world
only existed on paper. In HCO Bulletins and Policy Letters replete with the
trappings of bureaucratic red tape - colour-coded distribution lists,
elaborate references, innumerable abbreviations, etc - Scientology flourished
as an international organization of enormous influence

waiting in the wings to save the universe from the combined perils of
Communism, nuclear weapons and its own folly.

Sitting at an electric typewriter in his study at Saint Hill Manor, often
clicking away all night just as in the days when he was writing science
fiction, Hubbard demonstrated his extraordinary range as a writer by
effortlessly producing sheaves of documents that appeared to have been drafted
by committees of bureaucrats and lawyers. Laid out and printed like official
government papers, they conferred dry authority on content which, frequently,
would not have withstood too close scrutiny. But of course no Scientologist
would question the literal truth of anything Hubbard wrote, no matter how
improbable - if Ron said it was so, it was so.

Hubbard's blossoming omnipotence was bolstered by the stately fashion in
which he now travelled, always first-class, usually accompanied by a faithful
courtier and greeted at every destination by an awed welcoming party of
admirers. In October and November 1960 he visited South Africa to lecture
Scientologists in Cape Town and Johannesburg; in December he flew to
Washington DC, spent Christmas and the New Year there, returned to
Johannesburg to deliver more lectures in mid-January, and arrived back at
Saint Hill Manor towards the end of February 1961.

In March, Hubbard announced the launch of the 'Saint Hill Special Briefing
Course' for those auditors who wished to train personally under his auspices.
The cost of the 'SHSBC' was £250 per person and the first student to
enrol was Reg Sharpe, a retired businessman who had become so enamoured with
Scientology that he bought a house in the little village of Saint Hill,
adjoining the estate, in order to be close to Ron. For the first couple of
weeks there were only two students on the course, but more soon began to
arrive from around the world, lured by the promise that 'Ron, personally,
would discover and assess with the aid of an E-meter' each student's goal 'for
this lifetime'.

Mary Sue, who was the course supervisor, also held out the prospect of
material rewards: 'I want you to make money. If any one of you cannot conceive
of an auditor driving around in a gold-plated Cadillac or Rolls you had better
reorientate yourselves. I like the idea.[9]

As the numbers on the Briefing Course increased, accommodation became a
problem. The greenhouses where Ron had conducted his pioneering horticultural
experiments were demolished to make way for a 'chapel' which in reality was
used as a lecture hall. Other buildings went up around the manor without a
moment's thought for obtaining planning permission - Hubbard's strongly held
opinion was that what he did on his own land was his own business. It was a
view

the local authority was disinclined to share when someone pointed out what
was going on at Saint Hill and Hubbard was eventually prevailed upon to employ
an architect and apply for planning approval like everyone else.

The Briefing Course would eventually comprise more than three hundred taped
lectures by L. Ron Hubbard, its longevity sustained by 'technical
breakthroughs' that followed closely one upon the other, each new technique
replacing the last and requiring dedicated Scientologists to trek back to
Saint Hill time and time again in order to keep up to date.

When Hubbard was not lecturing he was writing directives covering
everything from how to save the world to how to clean his office. No detail
was too insignificant to merit his attention: one HCO Policy Letter covering
two pages was posted prominently in the garage at Saint Hill explaining how
cars should be washed and another was addressed to the Household Section
headed 'Flowers, Care Of'. He also dashed off a new potted biography of
himself adding further gloss to his already well-burnished career. It was
included in a handout headed 'What Is Scientology?':

'For hundreds of years physical scientists have been seeking to apply the
exact knowledge they had gained of the physical universe to Man and his
problems. Newton, Sir James Jeans, Einstein, have all sought to find the exact
laws of human behaviour in order to help Mankind.

'Developed by L. Ron Hubbard, C.E., Ph.D., a nuclear physicist, Scientology
has demonstrably achieved this long-sought goal. Doctor Hubbard, educated in
advanced physics and higher mathematics and also a student of Sigmund Freud
and others, began his present researches thirty years ago at George Washington
University. The dramatic result has been Scientology . . .'

The laudable aim of 'helping mankind' sat rather uncomfortably with the
requirement for security checks, which were stepped up during 1961. An even
more intrusive questionnaire was introduced which appeared to have been
designed with perverts and criminals rather than potential trouble-makers in
mind. Many of the questions reflected Hubbard's morbid preoccupation with
sexual deviation ('Have you ever had intercourse with a member of your family'
and 'Have you ever had anything to do with a baby farm?') and a wide range of
crimes were also probed ('Have you ever murdered anyone?' and 'Have you ever
done any illicit diamond buying?'). In addition Hubbard specifically wanted to
know if the individual being checked had ever 'had any unkind thoughts' about
himself or Mary Sue. Every check sheet was forwarded to Saint Hill on
Hubbard's orders. When combined with the individual folders in which details
of auditing

sessions were recorded, they made up a comprehensive dossier in which the
innermost thoughts of every member of the Church of Scientology were filed.

Three days after Christmas 1961, Hubbard flew to Washington DC to attend a
congress and publicize the benefits to be obtained by enrolling in the Saint
Hill Briefing Course. He asked Reg Sharpe to accompany him on the trip and
Sharpe was very soon made aware of his leader's little foibles. When their
aeroplane stopped for re-fuelling at Boston, Hubbard scurried across the
passenger terminal and stood with his back pressed against a wall for the
duration of the stop, explaining to his bemused companion that there were
people 'out to get him'.

In Washington, Sharpe was astonished by the adulation with which Hubbard
was received. He lectured for about four hours on each day of the congress to
a spellbound audience and had refined his speaking technique to a fine art,
shamelessly borrowing the tricks of show business and political
conventions. He liked to appear at the back of the hall to the accompaniment
of a drum roll and stride through the audience, waving his arms in greeting
and shaking hands on the way to the rostrum. His timing, the essence of a good
speaker, was faultless and he could hold an entire auditorium in thrall for
hours. Like a cabaret artiste doing two spots a night, he got into the habit
of changing his clothes during a break, appearing for the second half of his
lecture in a silk suit of a different colour, or sometimes a gold lamé
jacket. It held the interest of the audience, he explained, and also solved
his perspiration problems.

Hubbard's vigorous promotion of Saint Hill as the Mecca of Scientology
resulted in hundreds of young Americans making their way to East Grinstead,
somewhat to the surprise of the townspeople, who still had very little idea of
what was going on. 'Dr Hubbard' had recently adopted a rather lower profile
locally: he resigned from his position as the town's Road Safety Organizer,
pleading pressure of business, was very rarely seen outside the grounds of
Saint Hill Manor and no longer courted publicity from the local newspapers. By
and large, the influx of American visitors to the town was welcomed: they were
quiet, polite and spent freely. If they were less than forthcoming about what
they were doing in the area, that was all right with the locals, who
instinctively respected the rights of folk who wanted to 'keep themselves to
themselves'.

Members of East Grinstead Urban Council expressed some faint concern
inasmuch as Saint Hill Manor was restricted, by planning regulations, to
private residential use, but such was Dr Hubbard's reputation that they
resolved to do no more than urge him, in confidence, to apply for planning
permission regularizing the use of

the manor for office and research purposes. He responded by slapping in a
planning application to build a seventy-five-room administration centre in the
grounds of the manor and circularizing a 'Report to the Community' appealing
for support.

In the report, Hubbard revealed to the people of East Grinstead that as a
result of his experiments on plants and 'living energies' he was able to
reduce the physiological age of an individual by as much as twenty years and
increase the average life span by as much as twenty-five per cent. 'We have
not announced anything of this to the press,' he confided, 'as we are already
overworked in centres of the world for discoveries such as these. But we
wanted you as a friend to be aware of this, and consider you have the right to
know what is happening here.'

In August, Hubbard turned his attention to the broader arena of
international affairs by offering to help President Kennedy narrow the gap in
the space race. The young president had committed the United States to landing
a man on the moon before the decade was out and, as a loyal American, Hubbard
obviously wanted to do what he could to help. On 13 August 1962, he wrote a
long letter to the White House to advise Kennedy that Scientology techniques
were peculiarly applicable to space flight and that the perception of an
astronaut could be increased far beyond human range and stamina to levels
hitherto unattained in human beings.

To establish his bona fides, Hubbard claimed to have coached the 'British
Olympic team', producing unheard-of results. He added that he had been fending
off approaches from the Russians for years, ever since he was offered Pavlov's
laboratories in 1938. The first manuscript of his work had been stolen in
Miami in 1942, the second in Los Angeles in 1950 and 'only last week'
Communist interests had stolen forty hours of tape containing the latest
research work from the Scientology headquarters in South Africa.

Although he was convinced that there was a growing library on Scientology
in Russia, fortunately the Russians did not yet have the advanced knowledge
that would be applicable to the space programme. All the US Government need
do, he said, was turn over anyone needing conditioning for space flight and
Scientology would do the rest. Each man would need processing for about 250
hours and the cost would only be $25 an hour, with the possibility of a
discount for large numbers. 'Man will not successfully get into space without
us . . .' he warned. 'We do not wish the United States to lose
either the space race or the next war. The deciding factor in that race or
that war may very well be lying in your hands at this moment, and may depend
on what is done with this letter . . . Courteously, L. Ron Hubbard.'

It seemed that Hubbard seriously expected his offer to receive proper
consideration in the Oval Office, for two weeks later he was in Washington
discussing with the staff at the Hubbard Communications Office how to handle
the expected inflow of astronauts. It was agreed that any dealings with the US
Government would be on a cash basis only, that they would reserve the right to
reject anyone they considered to be unsuitable and that if Government
officials wanted to investigate Scientology techniques they would be told,
pleasantly, to 'go up the spout'. If there was a flood of astronauts arriving
for processing, Ron would come over from Saint Hill and set up a special
operation to handle them.[10]

On the voyage back to England, travelling first-class on the Queen
Elizabeth with Reg Sharpe, the two men passed their time auditing each
other. Hubbard told his friend that in a past life on another planet he had
been in charge of a factory making steel humanoids which he sold to thetans,
offering hire purchase terms if they could not afford the cash price.

Back at Saint Hill, Hubbard was baffled to discover that the President had
not replied to his letter, but everything was made clear to him a few months
later when agents of the Food and Drugs Administration staged a raid on the
Scientology headquarters in Washington. It was obvious to Hubbard that
the President had asked the FDA to look into Scientology as a result of his
letter and the FDA, wishing to promote its own programmes, had attempted to
turn the tables on Scientology.